Aimee Cox

Activist, Artist, Educator/Teacher, Performer, Writer/Editor

Aimee Meredith Cox is a cultural anthropologist and tenured professor of Performance and African and African American Studies at Fordham University. Aimee’s first book, currently available for pre-order on Amazon.com, is Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Choreography of Citizenship (Duke University Press, 2015). Her second book is an edited volume on Gender & Space (MacMillan). She is a contributing editor to The Feminist Wire, on the founding editorial board of Public: A Journal of Imagining America, and is the former co-editor of Transforming Anthropology. Aimee is a former professional dancer who studied on scholarship at the Dance Theatre of Harlem and toured widely with Ailey II/The Alvin Ailey Repertory Ensemble. Dr. Cox is also the founder of BlackLight, a young women of color-led activist art initiative that produced community-based projects in Detroit, Newark, and New York City. Aimee’s articles have appeared in Feminist Formations, Transforming Anthropology, SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society and in several anthologies and edited volumes.

truth telling

the power of seeing, truly seeing, people. ask me about it.

Dance, ethnograhic research, Performance, Youth Activism

I am here as a cultural anthropologist and independent writer exploring the new voices and perspectives featured at TED, particularly among the TED Fellows, this year. Beyond what happens on stage in the 4, 9, or 18 minutes, I am also interested in how the community of TED folk interact with one another in informal spaces. What does community really mean here? What are the multiple communities? What does openness look and feel like? What optics keep us from listening to one another? How do people find and create new spaces?